Ennead creates architecture that shapes the public realm. Our civic projects range from embassies to courthouses to major city infrastructure. The designs of these buildings integrate the latest technology and systems, address specific functional criteria, and exemplify civic purpose and responsibility. They activate their surroundings and nurture a sense of community through the inclusion of essential public space.

Our designs for diplomatic facilities create a welcoming civic presence that responds to local culture while proudly representing the United States. Serving as both community centers and workplace environments, these facilities balance openness and transparency with security, encourage the practice of diplomacy, and inspire cross-cultural exchange.

Our courthouses establish a positive civic presence and create spaces that affirm the significance of the judicial process.

Ennead creates accessible, welcoming spaces that enhance the visitor experience. These municipal facilities are civic anchors that establish place and form for important community resources.

Our infrastructure facilities go beyond addressing fundamental community needs and engage the civic realm. These facilities establish public space in unexpected locations and incorporate striking material palettes and forms to create memorable architectural statements that serve as community destinations.

Ennead’s comprehensive portfolio of education work has redefined learning spaces – from kindergarten to graduate school – with bespoke environments that establish a unique sense of place, inspire student development, promote collaboration across disciplines, and strengthen connections within the classroom and to the broader community.

Learn more about our approach to Higher Education here and our K-12 work here.

Informing our K-12 projects is our extensive higher education experience, which guides us to anticipate the next step in a child’s academic career as we create spaces that will prepare them for that future and optimize each stage of learning along the way. These spaces are sophisticated educational environments that balance technically-advanced teaching spaces with spaces for serendipitous social interaction and community building.

Learn more about Ennead's approach to K-12 schools here.

Our approach to the design of professional business, law, and medical schools both supports and is informed by the latest pedagogy. We make flexible buildings that promote academic and social exchange with spaces that encourage communication and networking between students, faculty, staff, and visitors.

Learn more about our approach to academic buildings for Professional Schools here.

Our educational facilities for the visual and performing arts merge the needs of traditional arts disciplines with innovations in technology to further inspire curiosity, creativity, and collaboration. Our visual and performing arts spaces emphasize transparency, putting talent on display and connecting with the larger community.

Learn more about our approach to academic buildings for Visual and Performing Arts here.

Our academic laboratories provide state-of-the-art research environments where multiple disciplines can collaborate on diverse research projects. We carefully integrate communal spaces within to encourage knowledge sharing and foster a sense of identity for the research community. The design of our laboratories emphasizes flexibility. This adaptability helps institutions thrive long into the future, leaving them well prepared to adjust to changes in technology and research needs.

Learn more about our approach to Research and Teaching Labs here.

We design dynamic centers for academic and student life. Each conveys a welcoming identity and creates an enriching environment for student growth and development inside and outside of the classroom. Our educational spaces are driven by the logic of the program and informed by current thinking about academic models and by the conviction that they must promote interaction and collaboration and foster a larger sense of institutional community. They foster successful implementation of new pedagogical techniques, such as the flipped classroom, and technological advances. They establish and strengthen connections between faculty and students by introducing a variety of informal spaces that function as connective tissue, promoting social and academic interchange. They excel at unifying areas of focused program with interdisciplinary and community space where students and teachers come together to exchange ideas.

Learn more about our approach to General Academic buildings here.

Our master plans are eminently practical, flexible and buildable, conceived in economically viable increments that can evolve over time to accommodate inevitably changing academic, social, and technical needs and funding sources.

The planning methodology is focused on identifying, understanding and preserving those aspects of the current environment that have been seminal in the support and development of a mature academic culture, and codifying these proven planning criteria as precepts and rules for revision and expansion. By using what worked in the past to expand to the future – coupled with innovative new planning concepts and tactical interventions – Ennead can ensure both the preservation and growth of an institution’s culture.

Learn more about our approach to Master Planning for Education here.

Ennead’s architecture transforms institutions. Our buildings advance institutional missions while they telegraph institutional identity. We partner with healthcare providers to create new human-centered environments that change the way care is delivered and experienced. Our buildings are designed to support technological innovation, safety, and quality for patients, their families, caregivers, and staff. We believe healthcare facilities should aspire to be civic places that connect to the surrounding city, extending the notion of care and supporting healthy communities.

Learn more about our approach to healthcare here.

Our healthcare work includes: Inpatient Care; Ambulatory Care; Cancer Care; Behavioral Health; Strategic & Master Planning; Children’s Hospitals; Translational Research; and Medical Education.

We have designed a wide range of commercial and mixed-use projects situated in dense urban settings, oftentimes in highly sensitive historic or planned districts. These projects extend beyond their program to engage their surrounding context and improve the urban fabric of their precincts.

Learn more about our approach to Commercial work here.

Recognizing the importance of tenant and visitor attention, we prioritize the inclusion of retail, food and beverage, and cultural amenities into our mixed-use programs. As a result, our commercial mixed-use environments are lively and attractive assets to the community.

We have a proven capacity to work with complex programs and develop them into an architecture that enhances the identity of our clients. Our planning techniques for corporate architecture integrates state-of-the-art dynamic technology to understand typical work patterns to strategically develop facilities that not only attract and retain top talent, but that also promote an efficient, comfortable, and inspiring workplace.

We have designed a range of residential buildings and hotels in dense urban settings, oftentimes in highly sensitive historic or planned districts. These projects resolve challenges that extend beyond the satisfaction of their programs to engage the public realm. They have been recognized for architectural excellence and for their ability to enliven the surrounding context and improve the urban fabric of their precincts.

With over fifty years of experience in designing innovative laboratory environments, we guide developers to make smart, economical decisions throughout ground-up and renovation research projects. Considering space, adjacency and functional requirements, we design game-changing commercial and institutional laboratories that serve multiple requirements, help to accelerate discovery, and attract and retain top-tier end users.

Our large-scale urban design and master planning work is rooted in a civic approach. Our designs actively engage and improve their surrounding contexts, some by reinforcing the existing fabric, others by creating destinations with bold, innovative design. These projects provide enlivened pedestrian experiences that invite users into the space and, in turn, act as community catalysts.

Ennead’s diverse and renown portfolio of laboratory buildings for scientific research, teaching, and innovation has helped to define many of the leading trends in state-of-the-art laboratory design. Unique to our integrated design approach is an emphasis on utilizing architecture to improve the quality of the working environment, and creating vibrant research communities where investigation, invention and impact can thrive.

Historically research buildings have been driven by function, efficiency and flexibility; our laboratories go beyond these goals to create connections across disciplines, opportunities for business and innovation, and moments of public engagement.

Learn more about our approach to laboratory building design here.

Critical to the success of our institutional and academic life science wet lab buildings is an innovative design approach to community and workplace spaces. We focus on creating dynamic and engaging research environments where scientists can collaborate to transform basic research into tangible improvements to human health.

Our engineering laboratories provide state-of-the-art academic research environments where multiple disciplines can interact and collaborate on diverse research projects. Critical to their success is the implementation of carefully designed and scaled communal spaces which create hubs for the sharing of knowledge necessary to support innovation and discovery.

Research is the foundation of undergraduate education. Teaching laboratories, which take the form of singular buildings or dedicated programs within multi-disciplinary research facilities, provide undergraduate instruction in the life and physical sciences as well as engineering disciplines.

These technologically advanced instructional facilities offer the opportunity to expose undergraduate students to graduate level research projects, entrepreneurial opportunities, and innovation.

In response to their constrained urban sites and relatively small, repetitive floor plates, our commercial life science and urban high-rise laboratories strategically integrate diverse research groups across multiple floors through the effective use of interior glazing and by creating strong visual connections between spaces, both vertically and horizontally. These strategies enhance collaboration between research teams that would otherwise be separated.

Reconfigurable work space and a broad range of architectural amenities and mixed-use programs are essential to create successful research laboratories while also engaging with their local communities and businesses to enrich the research environment.

With a focus on accelerating the cycle of discovery, our innovation and data science laboratories provide both academic institutions and commercial lab enterprises with forward-looking facilities that contribute to cutting-edge research that moves ideas and technologies to market at a faster rate.

Ennead has a long history of designing for the cultural sector and partnering with leading institutions to create spaces that enrich and enhance the visitor experience. From museums to concert halls, Ennead has deep expertise in the technical, social, and experiential requirements for world-class cultural and performing arts venues. Our award-winning buildings engage and embrace the public, delight artists and performers, and optimize the experience and enjoyment of the arts.

Our science and technology museums give form to the spirit and excitement of scientific inquiry, the thrill of exploration, the logic of process, and the value of unexpected discovery. These buildings simultaneously support the needs of administrators, staff, and researchers, improve collections storage and back-of-house spaces, and integrate state-of-the-art technology throughout.

Our extensive experience designing ground-up art museums well as renovations and expansions to existing facilities has afforded us a deep knowledge of the spatial, aesthetic and technical requirements for the presentation of art in all its forms. Our architecture is in service of the experience of art–it optimizes but never overwhelms, while offering a bespoke solution for the unique needs of the institution, its staff and its collections. Ennead museums welcome and inspire visitors and become vital cultural centers within their communities.

Our cultural and historical museums are profoundly civic in nature. We create iconic cultural and historical museum architecture that welcomes the community and creates a neighborhood space for formal and informal recreation, contemplation, and gathering.

Presentation styles within concert halls and opera houses are evolving: through our extensive and ongoing work with leading institutions, we have developed a deep understanding of the latest trends in the field, and the necessary technical requirements to create spaces that elevate performance and adapt to changes. Central to each of our buildings is the integration of the highest level of natural acoustics and the design of spaces that enhance and enrich the performer-patron experience.

Learn more about our expertise with venues for performing arts here.

Ennead creates iconic theaters that are designed around the primacy of the performer-patron experience. Our theaters are flexible — they can evolve with changing performance types, serve as multi-purpose venues, and provide public spaces for community engagement.

Accommodating emerging art forms and technologies and responding to the latest in performer-audience engagement trends, our theaters integrate client and stakeholder needs. Whether a traditional proscenium theater or a non-traditional performance space, an Ennead building supports dynamic and immersive performer-patron experiences.

Learn more about our expertise with venues for performing arts here.

Our academic art facilities contribute to campus identities and promote the arts as a critical part of the academic experience. Drawing upon our expertise in both education and fine and performing arts typologies, these academic arts facilities integrate cutting-edge trends and technologies across sectors. Central to each of these projects is a focus on spotlighting the process of creating, drawing the campus community into the space, and putting the arts on display.

With a rich history of working with prominent institutions to plan for large-scale institutional improvements over long timeframes, we help develop master plans that will allow for projects to be realized in impactful and sensitively-phased approaches. We help institutions plan for complicated phasing and strategize a balance for how and when to spend resources.

Essential beliefs about the inseparability of aesthetic, programmatic and urbanistic goals inform our approach to urban design and master planning. Whether for a corporate headquarters, academic campus, or a great museum, at the scale of an individual building, district, or city, our approach merges formal concepts and programmatic requirements with social responsibility and civic engagement.

In our master planning work, we have developed a range strategic approaches – such as analytics, physical planning, and visualization – that engage stakeholders and navigate regulatory negotiations to deliver optimal results.

At the urban scale, we create flexible plans and design guidelines that are financially viable, economically, and environmentally sustainable, responsive to growth and change, and positively impact surrounding communities.

Our precinct plans and comprehensive campus master plans interpret the distinctive identities of academic institutions and, in so doing, create places through the reinforcement, repair or improvement of the immediate environment. By using what worked in the past to expand to the future – coupled with innovative new planning concepts and tactical interventions – our team can ensure both the preservation and growth of institution’s culture.

Our approach to historic building restoration and adaptation is defined by the belief that signature buildings from past eras should be respected, but not replicated. Our renovations and additions consider the possibilities of lightness, transparency and translucency, the layering of space, and the importance of context. Ennead understands how to integrate progressive, forward-looking architecture within a historic framework, where old and new are made better by the juxtaposition.